saw
Niagara Falls before we went to the Fair. In New York, we took our first
subway ride, and a ferry ride around Long Island, seeing the skyscrapers
and the Empire State Building. That trip was quite an experience, and
probably the best trip of my life.

As
soon as Dan graduated from Coast Union High School in Cambria, I finished
a beautiful 2,200 square foot home on the beachfront in Morro Bay. We
moved into it in 1966 while Dan attended Cuesta Junior College.

After
graduating from Cuesta, he attended Cal Poly university in San Luis
Obispo, graduating in 1970. Dan then attended graduate school at the
University of California at Santa Barbara.

One
thing I enjoyed while living in this house was to join the Estero Bay
Kiwanis Club, which I belonged to for eight years. I quit when we got a
president that wasn't any good.

We
lived on the beach until 1979 when I sold the house to Dale, taking in
trade a house he had built in Atascadero and some cash. He remodeled it
and moved his family into it, and they resided there for several years
before moving to the hillside house where he and Billie currently
reside.

I
built my last house for speculation in 1972 on Hemlock Street in Morro Bay
before retiring, selling it for $27,000. I bought a new Winnabago motor
home with the profit.

After
we moved to Atascadero, we enjoyed going on camping trips with the
Atascadero Camper and Trailer Club, and Dorothy joined the Atascadero Art
Club.

In
1990, I discovered I had cancer of the prostate gland and that it had gone
into the bone. After treatment at the Sansum Clinic in Santa Barbara, the
cancer went into remission, and I have been doing pretty good.

As
I look back over my life, I can tell you that I took care of my family and
myself by being very careful with my money. I didn't blow it in. I liked
to have everything paid for, and I stayed out of debt. I made sure my
homes and cars were paid for. I thought about the future, when I would be
old, and the main thing for me was to have enough money to survive without
any

problems.
And that I have done.

I
never used tobacco, drank alcohol, and the only gambling I did was to
get out of bed in the morning. My attitude towards money and the need to
be careful with it led people to think that I wasn't a generous person,
and maybe I wasn't generous with handing out money, but I was always
happy to help my kids by loaning them money.

I
wanted to teach them to use money to make more money, not just to waste
it on playing. It was a lesson they all seemed to have learned
well.

I
was happy until I got the disease I ended up with. My family and my
wife, kids, grandkids, great grandkids are what keep me going. The best
thing that ever happened to me was getting married, for without that,
none of the other things would have happened.

So
many things have been developed in my lifetime that nothing like that
will happen again in history--automobiles, space travel, television,
telephone, computers, and medicine advances.

The
world has changed so much in the last hundred years that I don't see how
it can change a tenth as much in the next hundred. Although, who knows,
man might be living in space by then, manufacturing things up there. I
don't think things will be very good 2,000 years from now. Huge
asteroids might hit the earth and throw it out of balance, and we've
always had wars and rumors of wars.

I
like most people, and I believe that if you treat people like you want
them to treat you, you'll have a pretty happy life, and it seems like to
me that I've tried to be that way in my life.

I
always tried to be fair with people, and honest. My word was as good as
gold, and I did most of my business on a handshake. I liked to help my
children, loaning them money to help their businesses, if they wanted
it, just as my parents loaned me money.

I've
always said that I planned to live to be a hundred years old and then
get shot by a jealous husband. I don't care where I'm buried after I'm
dead. Once you're dead, you're dead.